The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

Everybody knows about the director’s role in making a film. The French even went to far as to call him or her the “author” of a film. (What’s French for bullshit?) Most people are aware that a film has a writer, who begins the whole insane, marvelous collaborative process that is movie-making. Real movie lovers know the cinematographer is responsible for much of the look of the film. Most ... Read more »

Cutter’s Way

Alternate title: Hamlet Goes to Santa Barbara. Jeff Bridges is Richard Bone (the source novel was called Cutter and Bone), friends with Alex Cutter (John Heard, in a very loud performance), a bitter alcoholic missing an arm and a leg. Cutter is the kind of guy who just grates on my nerves, all the time. My advice to bitter alcoholic ... Read more »

Curse of the Demon

Original title: Night of the Demon. Most monster movies don’t give up a good look at the monster until somewhere around the half-hour mark or later. The best ones don’t let you see it until near the end, i.e. Jaws, Alien, on the belief (which I heartily endorse) that what you don’t see is scarier than what you ... Read more »

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Beautiful to look at. Technically stunning (I know how they can change faces in a computer, which sure saves a lot of hours in the make-up chairs, but how did they make him shorter?). A moving and intriguing story. And … looooooong. The pace was often deadly slow. Couldn’t they have found a way to pep it up a little? David Lean made movies as long as this, but he tossed in a spectacular ... Read more »

CSNY Déjà Vu

I was not enthused about seeing this DVD, as I don’t much like concert films, and I’d already been to this concert. It was a fine concert, one of the best I’ve ever been to (after the first few numbers, when Stephen Stills finally stopped singing flat), but I had no real desire to revisit it. Browsing some of the reviews, I came across this quote from Kirk Honeycutt at THR.com:

The ... Read more »

A Cry in the Dark (Evil Angels)

A few months ago we could have had this movie from Netflix just for the asking, but at it turned out we had to wait many weeks before a copy became available. The reason was that a lot of people had the same bright idea we had, which was to see it again after the announcement that, 32 years after one of the worst atrocities of the Australian legal system (that didn’t involve their horrific ... Read more »

The Crusades

This is a series co-written and presented by Terry Jones. I think of Terry Jones as the Forgotten Python. He’s “the fat one,” the one whose name is least likely to be remembered, despite being so common … maybe because it’s so common. All the other Pythons have bits you’ll instantly think of. Graham Chapman was Brian. Eric Idle had the “Nudge, nudge” sketch. ... Read more »

Crosby, Stills, and Nash: Daylight Again

I think I have an old Laserdisc of this concert, which opened the new Universal Amphitheater, in a box somewhere. (Remember Laserdiscs? How are we going to watch them in 20 years when all the players are broken down and no one knows how to fix them? I still have a player in storage, but I have no idea if it still works.)

We had the great good fortune to get to know David Crosby ... Read more »

Crónicas

A dramatic film made in Ecuador. Ecuador? It’s one of those countries that, unless you’ve actually been there, you probably only know through memorizing the name of its capital city. (Quito.) I probably know more about Ecuador’s more interesting possession, the Galapagos Islands, than I do about the country itself. Well, turns out it can’t ... Read more »

Crocodiles, With David Attenborough

For once, the IMDb has never heard of this. It was an episode of “Nova,” one hour long, and Sir David appears only at the very beginning, in a canoe. Other than that, he’s just the narrator, and the script doesn’t have his usual zing. It’s worth watching, but rather slow-paced and not up to the standards of the ones Sir D produces himself.